


I trust you at the wheel even if we're going down

by thought



Series: I went to space and all I got was... [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Nobody Dies, Gen, Isabel Lovelace is doing her best, blatant lack of home repair, social media as inadvisable coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 06:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12184527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: That's the thing about finding a family: you still have to live with them afterwards.





	I trust you at the wheel even if we're going down

**Author's Note:**

> You don't have to read the first work in this series for this to make sense, but it will definitely help  
> With a million thank yous to Toomanyhometowns for putting up with my random bursts of yelling and for providing many of the ideas for parts of this story

"I can tell you're lying," Minkowski says.

Doug shifts a little further backwards and holds up his hands. "Ok, see, I know for a fact that polygraphs don't even work reliably, contrary to what the entire crime TV industry keeps telling us, so I'm gonna have to call shenanigans on your whole human lie detector performance."

Minkowski massages the bridge of her nose. "Eiffel. I can see the whole in the door. You weigh like, 150 pounds, you are a scarecrow, you can't just stand in front of the door and hope I won't see it."

"Ok, ok, listen, I... can explain."

"I'm waiting."

"So there was this zombie--"

"Eiffel!"

Doug sighs, deflated. He really wants to use the zombie story for something, he's been thinking about it for actual weeks. "I may have tripped over my shoelaces when I was coming out of our room and I may have grabbed the doorknob to keep myself from plunging to my doom down the stairs of... doom. And the doorknob, clearly structurally unsound to begin with, may have broken off. Which was not actually a thing I knew doorknobs could do."

"And you haven't fixed it because..."

"Ok, commander, think long and hard about everything you know about me. Do I strike you as the sort of person who knows how to revive door hardware from it's dusty grave?"

"Ok, I see your point. Why didn't you ask someone else to fix it?"

"I did. I asked Lovelace! Seeing as, you know, it's half her room."

Minkowski winces. "And?"

"Aaand she tried to duct tape it back on, gave up, put the doorknob in the back of our closet and called it fixed."

Minkowski groans. "Of course she did."

Doug inches sideways toward the stairs. "So I'm just gonna... go now."

"Nope," Minkowski crosses her arms over her chest. "We're gonna go to the hardware store. It's going to be very... educational. For you."

"Why don't you make Lovelace go? This seems like unfair treatment, I'm being targeted."

"Because you're the only person who might legitimately not know how to do this shit instead of just not caring. Lovelace built a shuttle out of a nuclear reactor and hope. She could replace a doorknob if she really wanted to."

"Maybe I'm just as apathetic! You don't know. I've gotten by for 34 years without being Mr. Handyman."

"And just think how much more rewarding the next 34 will be with this new wisdom."

Doug is pretty sure the last time he was in a hardware store was to buy Christmas lights that Kate had put up. "I'm holding you to that, Commander," he says. "Hera, keep a tally. When I'm 68 I want to know how many times I've benefited from whatever wondrous gifts of knowledge I'm about to get."

"I can't wait," Minkowski says dryly.

"I'll make sure to keep you updated. Hera and I will come visit you with an alphabetized list. Spoilers, it's gonna be short."

Hera says, "Doug, 34 years is a long time."

He grins. "Yup."

"Oh," Hera says, softly. "Ok then!"

Minkowski is studying him thoughtfully, like she's just noticed something new about him. He hopes it's not the cartilage piercing in his ear. That's the last time he listens to Lovelace's advice-- he'd felt a stronger sense of ownership over his own body for about 30 seconds and then all he felt was pain and the regretful suspicion that he's about 15 years too old for this phase of his life.

"I'm gonna mark it in my calendar," Minkowski says, fondly. Doug's pretty sure he's missed something. "And I'll want to hear about all the stupid things you two get yourself into, so set aside the whole afternoon. We'll be old, we can sit around and drink tea and complain about the kids on our lawns."

"Sure thing," Doug says., and Hera says\\\ "We'll be there."

***

"Please just humour me?"

Maxwell glares over at Lovelace where she's standing in the doorway to the kitchen, then pours the rest of that morning's coffeepot into the giant X-Men mug she'd liberated from Eiffel.

"I'm really not sure what it even matters to you, Lovelace, but I promise you, I don't get sick."

Ok, the truth is the back of her throat feels like it's been scraped raw and she's been sweating and chilled since the night before, but that certainly doesn't mean she's sick. She's not exaggerating. She hasn't been sick since she was nineteen, and she'd ignored it then, too, and she's still here. Only difference is now she actually has to interact with people for more than a few seconds to hand in a paper or pay for a coffee.

"Let me take your temperature," Lovelace bargains. "Prove me wrong."

"I'm a little busy," Maxwell points out, irritably. "One of Hera's servers is operating at 96% efficiency, I need to order a new one."

"I really... don't notice anything," Hera cuts in. "If you need to rest--"

"I'm fine," Maxwell says again. "You'll start to notice soon, Hera, and I'd rather get it fixed before you do."

Maxwell takes a large sip of the cold coffee, in the hopes that it will serve as a signal to Lovelace that the conversation is over. ...it doesn't. Damn it. Sometimes that works. She swallows and immediately has to rush to the sink as her chest protests the movement and she starts coughing uncontrollably. She splutters coffee into the basin, frantically trying to suck in air between coughs. The smell of dirty dishes triggers her gag reflex, and she can feel her eyes watering as she chokes.

She pushes herself away from the counter, hands braced on her knees as she struggles to get herself under control. Lovelace is suddenly beside her, rubbing her back in slow, steady up and down motions. It's a good thing she's never tried that on Jacobi, she'd be liable to lose her hand.

She doesn't say anything stupid, like 'it's ok,' or 'breathe,' which Maxwell appreciates, and she can admit the hand on her back gives her an additional stimulus to focus on instead of her fucking traitor lungs.

"Oooookay," Lovelace says once she's stopped coughing. "You're going back to bed."

"I'm really not."

"Yep, you are," Lovelace starts pushing her towards the hallway. Maxwell plants her feet.

"You're being ridiculous. I don't need to go to bed."

Lovelace exhales, probably frustrated, but when she speaks she's still calm. "Alana, we're going to go upstairs, I'm going to take your temperature, and, even if you aren't sick, you're going to try to sleep for at least five hours because the circles under your eyes are petitioning for their own area codes. Are we clear?"

Maxwell is nodding before she really realizes what she's doing, and by the time she wants to go back on it and tell Lovelace to go fuck herself, she's already taken a step towards the door and continuing is the lesser of two humiliating evils.

Upstairs, Lovelace leaves her in the room she shares with Jacobi while she goes to retrieve a thermometer from the bathroom cabinet. Maxwell sits on the edge of the bed and grabs a stray tablet, absently flicking through the household's recent internet history.

"I... probably don't want to know," Lovelace says, when she comes back. "But I'm asking anyway."

Maxwell doesn't ask why. She's realized there's never a good answer.

"Why is your mattress on the floor? What the hell happened to the bedframe?"

"Oh," Maxwell shrugs. "We broke it fighting over who should have won the last time we played Mass Effect multiplayer."

"...you broke. The bedframe. Over a... video game? I assume that's what that is. And instead of trying to fix it, you just... let the mattress sink."

"It's still just as comfortable," Maxwell says, shrugging.

"What happened to the rest of the bedframe?"

"Jacobi blew it up. Safely, out in the countryside, before you make that face."

The longer she's sitting down, the more all her bones feel like they're too heavy for her muscles to hold. She doesn't like it. Lovelace throws up her hands and comes to crouch down in front of her, handing her the thermometer. Grudgingly, Maxwell sticks it under her tongue.

Lovelace holds up a bottle of cough medicine and Maxwell physically recoils. There's no goddamn way she's trying to swallow that if there isn't a gun to her head, and she hates taking medication unless it's clearly necessary for her stupid body to perform repairs. Honestly, Maxwell really wishes she'd been born an AI.

Lovelace sets the cough syrup aside agreeably, and snatches the thermometer away as soon as it beeps. "Oh look, 100," she says. "Lie down."

"Do you actually want me to die of boredom?" Maxwell demands.

Lovelace pushes herself to her feet. "Just try. If you're still awake after an hour you can go back to whatever you were doing--"

"Hera's servers."

"Yeah. But at least stay in bed."

Maxwell glares, but gets under the blankets. Lovelace picks up the tablet and puts it on the dresser across the room, and then comes back over to study Maxwell like she thinks she managed to fuck up getting into bed somehow.

"I'm certainly not going to sleep with you hovering over me," Maxwell points out. Maxwell sleeps on the outside side of the bed, with her handgun between the top of the mattress and the wall and a knife taped to the bed under her pillow, and the little bag of dried mint leaves so she doesn't smell anything from anywhere else in the house, and the silly Star Trek blanket Jacobi had bought her-- as a joke, and because they can't ever comfortably share blankets when he always wants blankets fucking heavy enough to squish him and she gets overheated easily. This means Lovelace is standing close enough that her leg is brushing up against Maxwell's hip and it's kind of weird and awkward and Lovelace looks unsure of herself for the first time in this little encounter.

"Just. Uh. Come find me if you need anything," she says, finally. "Or whatever. I'll come check on you in an hour, no sneaking your laptop into bed with you until you've given sleep a chance."

"Go away, Lovelace," Maxwell says.

"right." Lovelace backs out of the room, hands clasped behind her back. "Oh, also? You might want to get a new bedframe before Minkowski notices. She has feelings about that sort of thing."

 

***

"Ugh," Doug says, with feeling, and slams the lid of the trash bin closed, shaking his hands. There is only a 12% chance that any remnants of the former sweet potato have remained on his skin, given the many precautions he'd taken when removing it from the bottom drawer of the refrigerator, but Hera lets him scrub his hands without comment.

"Why did you purchase something if you didn't intend to use it?" she asks instead.

Doug glances down in what is mostly likely embarrassment. There had been a 45.44% chance that this would be his reaction to her question, but she still experiences guilt at seeing it.

"Oh, you know, I'm a pretty busy guy, sometimes these things just slip my mind."

Doug is not busy. Doug spends most of his time watching television or reading or talking to her. Approximately 3 out of 7 days he'll leave the house, either to go shopping with Mr. Koudelka, or to wander aimlessly through shopping malls and museums. He likes to send her modified images over Snapchat of things he thinks she'll like, even though she's explained to him that she can look through his phone's camera whenever she wants. He can never find out that she's stored all of the pictures in a folder berried safely deep down in her system files where no one will look.

"So you forgot about it," she says.

"Hey!" Doug holds up his hands. "No one forgot anything."

Dr. Hilbert looks up from where he has been reading and taking notes at the kitchen table. "Please tell, Eiffel, what you intended to do with this sweet potato."

Doug frowns. "Cook it!"

"How?"

"...with heat?" Doug starts putting away the dishes from the drying wrack. "You know? Like you cook sweet potato's. Obviously."

Hera really wishes it had not taken Dr. Hilbert to point out the obvious. "You could have looked up how to cook it," she says. "The internet is amazing, Doug. And Commander Minkowski bought some cook books when you went to the library sale."

Doug hunches his shoulders. "I can cook a potato, ok? I'm not quite that useless."

Dr. Hilbert arches an eyebrow. Hera says "Nobody is saying you're useless. Nobody thinks that, Doug."

"Thanks, Hera," Doug says, but his tone indicates disbelief. "And shut up, Dmitri, literally nobody asked for your opinion."

"You could have googled it if you were embarrassed," Hera offers, uncertainly. She doesn't like the way Doug's whole body has seemed to curve listlessly in on itself. "No one would have known."

"Except you," Doug mutters. "But it's fine, because I'm not embarrassed. I don't need to look up how to cook a sweet potato."

"I don't look at your search history!" Hera says, indignantly. "I do understand the concept of privacy."

Alana obviously hears her raised voice from where she's performing illegal money transfers in the living room while the same Star Trek film plays for the fifth time on repeat on the television. "Hera?" she asks, sitting up and putting her laptop down on the coffee table.

"It's nothing," Hera says. "Doug thought I monitored everyone's internet activity. I think I'm a little offended."

"That's a very understandable reaction," Alana says, like she has any better idea about appropriate emotional reactions than Hera does. Doug comes over to lean in the door of the living room.

"Sorry, Hera. I didn't mean to imply I don't trust you. It's just kind of hard not to, well, remember that we have the, uh, luxury of privacy now."

"I didn't have a choice on the Hephaestus," Hera says. "But I promise, Doug, here I have never and will never invade your privacy like that."

Doug smiles at her nearest camera. "And what about Hexadecimal over there?" he says, a little petulantly.

Alana holds up her hands. "Like Hera said. I would never invade your privacy like that."

Doug exhales. "Ok. Well. That's... good to know. Not that I was worried."

He pushes off the doorframe, heading back into the kitchen to finish putting away the dishes. Maxwell sits back down on the floor and retrieves her laptop.

"What launched that little freak out?"

Hera makes a rude noise. "Dr. Hilbert was accusing Doug of not knowing how to cook."

Alana rolls her eyes. "Cooking is overrated. And besides, what the hell does Volodin know, he uses Bing."

Hera runs a few scenarios. "Dr. Hilbert always keeps his laptop screen hidden. How do you know what search engine he uses?"

Alana frowns. She doesn't look up. She never looks at Hera's cameras, with the same deliberateness that Doug always does look at them. Hera appreciates both of them for it -- Doug for caring enough to treat her like a human and Alana for understanding that she doesn't hold the same social values around physical communicative body language as most humans do.

Hera continues. "You just said you don't look at anyone's internet activity-- well, you said you don't look at Doug's, but there was an implication there that's strong enough to be taken as intent."

Alana laughs. "Yes. Right. I absolutely don't ever invade anybody's privacy. Just like you said."

Hera has to take a few seconds to process her tone. "You're lying."

"Of course I am. You can't tell me you don't take a look now and then?"

"I literally just said exactly that. I don't and won't. Ever."

"Wait, you meant that?"

"Yes! Hence why I said it."

"Oh. I just assumed you.... meant..."

"You assumed I meant the exact opposite of what I said. Did I come off sarcastic? I'm usually pretty good about that."

"No, no, you didn't, I just..." Alana shakes her head. "Never mind, Hera."

"Um," says Hera. "I do kind of mind. Can we talk more about this later?"

"Of course," Alana says.

Hera stays quiet for a few minutes, and Alana returns to her banking. Finally, unable to contain herself, Hera says, "You have to tell me, does Dr. Hilbert really use Bing?"

 

***

 

"You are fucking kidding me,," Jacobi says, flatly, into the phone.

Maxwell is shaking with silent laughter in the hallway beside him, arms wrapped around herself and hair falling in her face. "Holey shit," she gasps. "We're going to die here, after everything we've done, because the fucking Sûreté were bored and decided that we were disturbing the peace. Whose peace, exactly? The cows?"

"Did you hear that, Lovelace?" he says. "I hope you're happy."

"Jesus Christ," Lovelace says on the other end of the line. "I didn't realize Christmas had come three months fucking early. I'm sorry I got a little delayed by the fucking surprise blizzard, I'm driving in a winter wonderland out here."

"Pretty sure you're not driving anymore, actually, hence this conversation."

"Go fuck yourself, daniel."

You were in the air force," Jacobi says. "You flew plains! You flew *expensive* planes! You flew a spaceship!"

Maxwell, who had been the one to first call Lovelace on the grimy courtesy phone, whispers, "What the fuck is four-wheel drive? The car has four wheels, this should be the fucking default." It's not even a good impression of Lovelace but Jacobi has to turn away from the phone so he can laugh anyway.

"Ok, how stuck are you, exactly?" he says.

"I'm fine. This is fine. I'm going to push the car out of the ditch and I'll be on my way to pick up your peace-disturbing asses in no time."

"I mean, we'll probably be dead by then, but ok," Jacobi says. "Also, you're going to push the car out of the ditch. Because you're Superman-- shut up, Maxwell, I realized the joke as soon as I said it."

Lovelace growls under her breath. "Look. Can you two get out of there and erase any record of yourselves?"

"Absolutely," Jacobi says.

"Can you do it without killing anybody or starting a manhunt?"

He thinks about it. "There's like, a sixty-forty chance."

"In favour of..."

Down the hall, their assigned officer makes a 'finish up' gesture. Jacobi nods at her. "I gotta go, justice is getting antsy."

"Fucks' sake, Daniel--"

"Bye, Lovelace," he says.

"Bye!" Maxwell says loudly toward the phone. Jacobi hangs up on Lovelace's very colourful swearing.

"She grew up in New York," Jacobi says as they walk down the hall. "I'm 99% certain it snows in New York."

"She didn't get her driver's licence until she was 25," Maxwell says. "And she told me only people who are rich or stupid drive in New York City, and she was neither of those things."

"I'm pretty sure you need to be able to drive to join the military," Jacobi says, darkly.

Their friendly neighbourhood beacon of justice is tapping her watch with one gold-painted fingernail. "We're not going to hold you two," she says as soon as they're within earshot. "You have no past charges and we don't have the room right now. You'll have to wait until we get court dates set, but otherwise you are free to go. I advise you pay the fine promptly."

"...oh," Jacobi says. He's been mentally preparing for fight or flight or painful and violent death by Warren Kepler, and he has no idea what to say in reaction to this.

Maxwell smiles her 'talking to humans' smile. "We really appreciate your kindness, Officer Meier. We promise we'll be model citizens from now on."

The officer looks about as convinced by that as she should be, but she obviously doesn't think it's worth the effort to call her on it.

They sit together on hard plastic chairs, wreathed in the cloying sent of cheap industrial cleaner and the sour reek of stale booze from the guy beside him. He can tell Maxwell is on the verge of throwing up. he is, too, but for different reasons. One day, theoretically, he's not going to hear Warren fucking Kepler's voice in the back of his head reminding him of the path he was on before mid-2011.

It takes three hours before they're provided with their actual citations on paper. Jacobi wants to ditch the identities and leave them unpaid just on fucking principle.

They get their personal effects returned, which, thank Christ they'd managed to ditch their weapons and his more fun parlour tricks before the cops had gotten close or they'd be doing a hell of a lot more explaining. Maxwell's phone rings about twenty seconds after she turns it on. Jacobi makes a face into his own phone's camera and hopes Hera sees. The illusion of goddamn privacy would be nice.

"I'm ignoring that," Maxwell says, but her phone answers itself on speaker before she can put it in her pocket.

"I cannot believe you two!" Minkowski says as soon as the line connects. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"A lot more than you do in an average day," Maxwell says, affecting boredom. The snow is still coming down in heavy wet flakes, and there's already a tiny snowdrift forming on the top of Maxwell's head. Jacobi brings a hand up to his own hair to brush away any ambitious precipitation.

"What part of keeping a low profile is difficult for you to understand?" Minkowski is still shouting. A siren starts up fifteen feet away as a police car pulls out of the parking bay and Maxwell clenches her teeth tightly. He's on the verge of forcing his brain to work with his mouth to form actual sentences so Maxwell doesn't have to deal with Minkowski, but Maxwell's starting to get that stubborn 'fuck you' hardness and he knows damn well not to get between her and her target when she's in that kind of mood.

"I know this might be difficult for you to imagine, Minkowski," she says, "but it's going to take me about two minutes with an internet connection to wipe any record of us from their system. We weren't photographed or fingerprinted, so there won't even be anything Goddard could use to track us." She's got to be leaving something out; she'd seemed pretty damn sure they were about to be assassinated two hours before. It's kind of heartwarming, how she thinks their deaths will be clean.

"That is so far from the point it's not even on the same continent," Minkowski snarls. Maxwell tosses the phone back and forth between her hands.

"Is there a point to this conversation or do you just need to remind yourself that you think you're in control?"

"I'm coming to pick you up."

"Lovelace already tried that. We'll take a cab."

"Lovelace," Minkowski says, darkly, "crashed the car into a ditch and then tried to push it out with the power of her embarrassment. It's not going anywhere any time soon."

"Like I said. We'll take a cab."

"I really think you've interacted with enough members of the public for one day. Besides, I'm picking Lovelace up before I come get you."

A very tiny smirk inches its way to the corners of Maxwell's lips. She glances questioningly at Jacobi, who nods furiously. There's a reason that he and Maxwell aren't supposed to drive anymore, and that reason is currently waiting to come get rescued from a ditch by Renée Minkowski and about ten cubic tons of fucking Karma.

"Ok," Maxwell says. "We'll wait."

***

Renée is sitting at the kitchen table doing the crossword and picking at the last of her now-cold eggs. She's also on her third cup of coffee, and her eyelids still feel like they weigh twenty pounds. And it's all Isabel's fault. ...well, ok, it's maybe a tiny bit her own fault, but it's Isabel who gets up at 5:30 AM every morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to run five miles. And Renée can't sleep through anything anymore, especially not Isabel climbing across her to get out of bed.

And probably if Renée were a different kind of person, she could ignore Isabel's cheerful invitation to join her on these idiotic excursions. She's sure it was intended as a friendly offer, not as a challenge. ...mostly sure. At least fifty percent. Honest to fucking God, not having to do this sort of thing is supposed to be one of the main benefits of losing her entire military career. It's especially obnoxious because she knows Isabel has probably only been asleep for three or four hours.

Dom, who, more often than not, has also only been asleep for a couple hours, doesn't even wake up. They don't even have coffee before the run. Renée's really glad Isabel's comfortable enough with them to sleep in their bed, but she doesn't know how long she can keep pretending enthusiasm for 5:30 AM insanity. She's having a few too many flashbacks to Basic. And no, admitting the truth is not an option. Renée has her goddamn pride, thank you.

Another disadvantage of her new morning routine is that she's increased her caffeine intake, and, as a result, she's started noticing everyone else's caffeine habits. Honestly, she should have known better than to trust the grocery shopping to Dom and Doug, but she assumed some level of basic decency. A level above instant coffee. And she had believed, naively, that even if they purchased instant coffee, someone would be human enough to object. Yet she is sitting here, drinking the coffee that she had to go out and buy herself, and watching Jacobi spooning the disgusting powder into his mug with no apparent distress.

"Dear twitter," he says, flatly, without looking over at her. "Today I was able to enjoy my caffeinated beverage of choice without the oppressive weight of silent judgement baring down on me."

"I didn't say anything," Renée says, darkly. And then, "You don't actually have a twitter account, do you?"

"It's an exercise in fiction writing," he says. "I like to tweet like I'm living my ideal life."

"Are you deliberately bating him?!" She doesn't need to clarify who.

"I mean... maybe? A little bit?"

"No one should be using social media," she says. She cannot believe this is a thing she needs to say.

"But then how would Eiffel show Hera the world? Shining, shimmering, sparkling--"

"Do not."

"And he's started sending shit to Maxwell after Hera told him she was hacking into his account and making fun of him. It pisses her off so much, it's great. Do you know how many frogs Eiffel encounters in his day-to-day life? Because Maxwell does."

"This is the most irresponsible thing-- please tell me Isabel isn't a part of this, too?"

"Nah, she's still in mourning for livejournal. Her final post was 'brb space', it was truly a masterpiece."

"Jesus, it's like talking to Eiffel. I know you're speaking English, and yet I have no idea what you just said. Don't put your spoon in the dishwasher, it's probably leaking. Dom's apparently just been hoping if he ignores it long enough it will stop, which, incidentally, is exactly why we lost our damage deposit on the flat in Paris when we were 25."

"That's a nice story, Minkowski. Thanks for sharing." 

She glares at the back of his head. Before she can respond, the front door opens and Maxwell and Isabel come in, shaking snow off their boots. The noise must draw Hilbert's attention, because a minute after they drip their way into the kitchen he wanders in from the living room, clutching his tea mug in both hands. He looks exhausted.

Hilbert brushes past Jacobi heading straight for the kettle. She is regrettably aware that his mug still contains the sad remains of the tea leaves from his first cup, because he is apparently immune to the bitter acidity of over-brewed black tea, but seeing him pour new water into the cup without so much as blinking is a new sort of horror. And then, to compound her horror, he starts spooning instant coffee in alongside the water and old tea leaves.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asks, and it's probably not a good sign that Isabel, Maxwell, and Jacobi all glance down nervously like they might have been doing something to piss her off without realizing it. There's even a faint crackle of nervous static from Hera's speakers.

"Oh wow," Isabel says, following Renée's gaze to Hilbert. "You really don't have a soul, do you?"

"Have not slept in two days," Hilbert says, darkly. "And I have seen you drink worse."

"In space! When I was living a horror movie!"

"Hmm," Maxwell says, watching Hilbert add sugar to the monstrosity in his cup.

"Don't even think about it," Renée tells her. Unsurprisingly, Maxwell ignores her.

"I can respect your ingenuity," Maxwell tells Hilbert. "I mean, it's the only thing I respect about you, but hey, one out of a million ain't bad."

"If you ever try to drink something like that I expect someone to film it," Isabel says.

"You forced your dogs to wear dress up clothes when you were a child, didn't you," Renée says. Isabel sticks her tongue out.

"Oh hey," Maxwell says, waving a hand to get Jacobi's attention. "The thing came in the mail."

He perks up. "About time. Want to come with me?"

"You weren't thinking of trying it without me, were you?"

Isabel clears her throat. "I'm not even gonna ask what you two are talking about, but whatever it is is going to have to wait. Right now you're going to confirm some dates and locations for me."

"Are we?" Jacobi asks dryly.

Isabel smiles a bit. "Yep. I think my timelines match up for the most part, but there's some stuff in Russia in 2012 and California in 2014 that seems off, and I'm betting you were involved to some degree."

And because Isabel possesses a mysterious power that Renée is both envious of and deeply uncomfortable with, Maxwell and Jacobi follow her agreeably out of the kitchen.

She glances over at Hilbert where he's still stirring his coffee slowly, staring vacantly at the tile above the sink and slowly listing sideways. Hera hasn't said anything all morning. She doesn't even know where Doug is.

"You should get some sleep, Dmitri," she says. He doesn't react. On the stairs she hears Jacobi swear, followed by Lovelace and Maxwell laughing. She pushes away the rest of her eggs and rests her head in her hands on the table. The smell of coffee is starting to make her sick.

***

Isabel wakes up from the first decent sleep she's gotten in months when it's still dark outside. She's not sure what's woken her at first --Renée is pressed up along her back with an arm wrapped securely around her and breathing slow and even, Dom is sprawled out on the edge of the bed, blankets kicked off -- but then she hears the soft hiss of static from Hera's speakers.

She extracts herself from Renée, climbs over Dom and shivers when her feet hit the cold floor. Renée makes a sleepy, questioning noise.

"It's fine, go back to sleep, Commander," Hera says very softly.

Isabel pulls on a fleece robe and pads out of the room, closing the door gently behind her before she says anything.

"Hera?"

"Sorry to wake you, Captain," Hera says, still quiet. Eiffel and Volodin must still be sleeping. She creeps past their door and pauses at the top of the stairs, looking towards Maxwell and Jacobi's room. The door is open, and she doesn't have to go closer to realize they're not there.

She allows herself ten seconds to indulge in selfish irritation, rubbing the sleep furiously from her eyes and hunching her shoulders deeper into the robe. Her eyes and wrists hurt all the time, now, from working at computers and sorting through paper records. Sometimes she wakes up and doesn't know where or when she is for five, ten, fifteen minutes. Sometimes she wonders if she's woke up at all.

She knows she gets too invested in things. Always has, has the shitty tattoos and Juvy records to prove it, 1996 to 2000 spent hitchhiking around the country in the name of whatever cause or girlfriend or punk band had captured her heart, then after that her USAF career, studded with commendations and records set. She has clawed her identity and her history from a universe that never cared to give it to her-- she'd taken the subway alone at age 12 to visit the Stoenwall Inn, the bus at 18 to Mexico City, a motherfucking space shuttle at age 30 to the limits of human knowledge. And after all that, her need to tear Goddard Futuristics to the ground is on a whole other level. She has never felt like this before. Her entire existence has never been so devoted to one goal, every breath she takes like the ticking of a countdown, her heart pulsing anger in her chest for years without respite. She doesn't remember what it's like to be tired, even when her body is on the verge of collapse.

She knows the others worry, but she doesn't think they understand just how far she is willing to go. She lets Dom sit beside her shoulder-to-shoulder over stacks of files, lets Renée hold her down and kiss her like she's trying to make her forget. Sometimes it even works, for a few seconds.

Downstairs, Maxwell and Jacobi are sitting on the sofa in the dark. They aren't half way out the door with their bags packed, so it could be worse, but they're also not even pretending to watch TV or play a video game, so it could also be a hell of a lot better.

"Couldn't sleep?" Isabel asks, coming up behind the back of the sofa. She wasn't trying to mask her approach, so they already know she's there, but it's become habit now to test their boundaries and her place inside of them. She'd like to say it's entirely altruistic, but then again she'd like to say a lot of things. Isabel is very aware that she's the only person who has taken the time to learn Jacobi and Maxwell as people and as weapons both. They fall into her orbit like magnetic puzzle pieces snapping back into place, and it hadn't taken long for her to realize that they have never existed together without a third, without hands at the backs of their necks and a voice in their ear, someone to play protector or cheerleader or authoritarian as the situation calls for it. They can survive by themselves but as a unit Kepler had made them a weapon and someone has to be willing to make sure it stays in good condition. The metaphor gets away with her, sometimes.

Truth is she probably needs them as much as they need her and nobody's all that happy about it. Isabel has always had her people, always been that friend with the open door and the shoulder the cry on and the list of everybody's allergies tucked in her back pocket just in case. Her squad in the Air Force had been the best, and she'd never had anyone request a transfer. The Hephaestus was the first time she'd failed to keep her people safe and yes, she is painfully aware just how fucked up she is over it, thank you, Renée.

"Something like that," Maxwell says. Jacobi is curled into himself in the very corner of the sofa, and he doesn't say anything even when Isabel hops over the back of the sofa and perches on the opposite edge.

She's still learning what keeps them up at night. They don't have nightmares, don't have the same sort of trauma that the rest of them do around the whole fucking mission. Sometimes she thinks they don't know why they chose this life of hiding and restless boredom and awkward dinner table conversations when they could have returned with Kepler and gone back to pushing the limits of their minds and bodies and bank accounts, and quite frankly the fact of that uncertainty alone is enough for her to want to put a bullet between Kepler's eyes.

There's an unspoken understanding in their household that Eiffel and Renée \\(and maybe Hera, even after sharing space for actual years she barely knows the AI) are the only ones for whom boredom isn't dangerous. And that includes Dom-- some of the things he's done to get the truth behind a story and some of the countries he's done them in would make Isabel think twice. Left to their own devices for too long most of them will burn down the world just to see if they can. The problem is Jacobi, Maxwell, and Volodin don't have the ethics that ensure their need to act is aimed in the right direction.

That being said, not knowing what keeps them up at night means she doesn't know how to make it better. They hadn't spoken to her for a week the first and only time she'd suggested they search out some sort of mental health supports, and Renée hadn't spoken to her for a week the one and only time she'd convinced them to try to bake 2:00 AM cookies. She knows better than to suggest alcohol, and she values her life so she doesn't suggest any kind of hand-to-hand sparring.

Maxwell gets up at one point to grab her tablet, and while she's gone Jacobi slowly unfolds enough so that he's lying down, knees practically against his chest on the small sofa and the top of his head just brushing the side of Isabel's thigh. Cautiously, she rests her hand, palm up beside his head, and after a few seconds he turns a bit so the side of his forehead and his cheek are resting in her hand. She always waits for him to initiate contact. She thinks Kepler didn't, and she thinks Jacobi convinced himself that he preferred it that way, but she is trying not to replicate every goddamn pattern of behaviour that Kepler used around them.

'Only the useful ones,' a voice in her head that sounds a bit too much like Lambert murmurs, but she's gotten pretty good at ignoring that voice.

Maxwell comes back and studies their position suspiciously, then plops herself on the floor in front of Isabel, tugging the coffee table closer so she can settle the tablet comfortably. She leans back against Isabel's knees like she's meeting a challenge. Isabel and Jacobi are similar in that they both acknowledge that they function better as human beings if they aren't alone. Maxwell isn't like that, and Isabel still struggles with the almost resentful way she accepts Isabel's probably-clumsy attempts at connection.

Isabel leans back, rests her head on the back of the sofa and stares up into the dark at the ceiling. She's pretty sure none of them are going to sleep tonight, but maybe this is just as important.


End file.
